If I asked you to design a car, how would you start? I think you would presume quite a lot of the basics before moving onto the details. For example, you would include four wheels – one at each corner – and some sort of steering device. An engine too of course, and seats for the driver and passengers. Then they’d need to be protected from the weather, but at the same time see where they were going. So your design in essence wouldn’t be so different from anyone else’s. Only later in the process would we start to see whether you were working on a Fiat 500 or a Lamborghini.
I travel around a lot, meeting clients and speaking at conferences, so I’m often asked to expand on my ideas for what makes a successful ICO. Almost always my observation about what doesn’t work is when enterprises are wrapped up only in the form of their offering (which is more usually a Lamborghini than a Fiat!) and seem to have neglected the content, like the wheel at each corner, the steering, power and braking systems.
The truth is that the basics of any ICO are always the same, and yet teams get so excited by the product they want to bring to market that they think those basics don’t need to be attended to. They presume that we presume that there will be wheels and an engine and so on, but often the essential ingredients aren’t there. From my point of view a key ingredient is marketing. Yes, of course an ICO must have a good product, and the financial structure must stack up, but without marketing: zilch, a car without wheels.
To promote the principles I believe in – the Six Proven Steps to Attract ICO Investors – this year I have written a book of the same title, and talked audiences through the steps at numerous meetups. The feedback I received during the year has helped me revise my presentations to provide a deeper dive into each part of the process, so that now I devote a whole talk to just one step.
When I’m asked to say what makes a successful ICO, I’m often amazed by the lack of clear-thinking which would-be ICO teams have brought to their project. It seems like they’ve presumed that there are wheels and an engine without spending much time at the drawing board figuring out how these fit together. And so there are many Whitepapers in circulation which appear to be full of information and fancy graphics, but which mainly fail to address the basic six steps. You may argue that there are only five steps, or twelve, or whatever. We don’t need to dispute the number, but we do need to agree on a process which is both logical, and where the steps support and relate to each other. That way we can arrive at a solid platform for the ICO which has all the necessary parts to ensure a successful launch.
You may believe that the offering of your ICO is so incredibly innovative that all the ‘normal boring’ stuff isn’t needed. If you have invented a flying car, then possibly you don’t need to factor in ‘a wheel at each corner’, but frankly, I doubt it. Here is a tough truth: There is nothing on earth which is completely new, and therefore you cannot get away with simply declaring that your product or service is ‘unique’. It isn’t, and it certainly won’t be by the time it reaches the marketplace. What we call ‘innovation’ is really just the slow process of building on previous ideas and inventions. You can bet your bottom dollar that if you have thought of something, so will someone else. ICOs operate in a small and crowded world, and they can never presume that their audience sees the same brilliance in their offering that the launch team does. The audience has to be convinced, step by step, that the claims made are real, and that there is an engine… and a wheel at each corner.
How to do this? By marketing of course! One of the crucial functions of a well-planned marketing campaign is to address presumptions from both sides of the equation – the ‘sellers’ and the ‘buyers’ - and make sure that all parties are truly educated in what the potential of the ICO is, and what it can achieve. When the ICO team stops presuming to know what their audience is presuming, then the way is open for a step by step campaign that will result in success, for investors and enterprise alike.
Related to all of the above, I’ll leave you with quite a challenging quote from the Czech/French writer Milan Kundera: ‘Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.’ Now there’s a big thing to presume!
Read more at:
https://6steps.online
